History of Medicine

We Were Here First

From the mid-19th century the families of three brothers named Gingle (or Gingell) lived near the small brook just south of the NLM site. An 1865 map shows Joseph Gingle living just north of the brook, while Madison, his wife, Artemesia, and 12 children, and Henry, his wife, Jane, and 7 children lived further south near Old Georgetown Road. Madison’s farm, Woodmont, gave its name to nearby Woodmont Avenue. An 1879 map shows Henry Gingle living in a house near the brook. By 1894, that house had disappeared.

Martenet and Bond's Map of Montgomery County, Maryland.
Baltimore, 1865

G.M. Hopkins. Atlas of Fifteen Miles Around Washington, Including the County of Montgomery Maryland.
Philadelphia, 1879.

Courtesy Montgomery County Historical Society

Several members of the Gingle family, including Madison and Artemesia, are buried in the small graveyard by the Bethesda Church, just north of the NIH campus.

Some of the items dug up in the 1983–4 excavations, such as ceramic fragments, glass, bones, and bricks, may have come from a Gingle family trash pit.